Autobiography of Charles Clinton Nourse Part 10

At the ensuing regular term of the supreme court held at Des Moines, December 5, 1871, the following entry was made in the case: "At the argument term held at Davenport in October last, on application of George Sneer per se, appellant herein, the court ordered that the appeal be dismissed." Before this dismissal either at Davenport or at Des Moines Sneer had settled with me and paid me the fee agreed upon, and I had nothing further to do with the case except to reproach him for violating his agreement with me that I should prosecute the case to a final result.

It appeared from the sequel that Judge Cole had also prepared a dissenting opinion in the case, and these two opinions, that written by Judge Beck as the opinion of the court, and the one written by himself were both published in the _Western Jurist_ the ensuing January, the one marked "B" and the other marked "C," but suppressing the fact that the opinion marked "B" was the opinion of a majority of the court, and that none of the judges, except Judge Cole, agreed with the opinion marked "C;" and having the following extraordinary note printed in connection with the opinions, Judge Cole being then the editor of the _Western Jurist_: "These two articles, this and the following which advocates a different view of the same question, are from members of the profession in Iowa occupying equal prominence before the public, and whose opinions are ent.i.tled to consideration."

Whilst these opinions do not give the detail of the case that was submitted to the court and to which they relate, yet by carefully reading them you can easily see that they refer to an actual controversy that had been pending before the supreme court. The supreme court of Iowa subsequently decided the question that was involved in the case of Sneer vs. the City of Des Moines, establis.h.i.+ng the principle as applied to this transaction to the effect that the bonds were absolutely void in the hands even of an innocent purchaser if such had been the case. See

McPherson vs. Foster, 43 Iowa, page 48.

Mosher vs. Independent School Dist., 44 Iowa, page 122.

French vs. Burlington, 42 Iowa, page 614.

Andrews vs. Orient Fire Ins. Co., 88 Iowa, page 579.

Holliday vs. Hildebrandt, 66 Northwestern Reporter, page 89.

The dismissal of the appeal by Sneer left the decree entered by Judge Maxwell in full force as though no appeal had ever been taken, and the parties procuring this result, after they had full knowledge of the fact that the majority of the judges of the supreme court held the bonds void, are fully ent.i.tled to all of the credit that their conduct merits, and I only record the matter here as a matter of history and as vindication of myself and to exonerate myself from any responsibility for the final result, as I had no knowledge of the dismissal of the appeal until long after the thing was done.

I have within the past few weeks examined the archives of the supreme court, and find that the original opinion of the court written by Judge Beck signed "B" and printed in the _Western Jurist_ (see Vol.

VI-1872) cannot be found, and also the paper signed by George Sneer dismissing the appeal is missing from the files of the court. I presume the city council, as they had by their attorney asked to be enjoined from disputing the validity of these bonds, had obtained a decree against themselves to that effect, very willingly paid the bonds when they matured, but of this I have no actual knowledge.

CHAPTER XVI

BIRTH OF A SON AND PERSONAL INCIDENTS

Leaving the history of political and professional for the present, it will now be necessary to revert and give in some detail matters more personal and affecting more nearly my own private life. I have already given an account of my marriage and removal to Des Moines.

On the 18th of February, 1863, my wife and myself were made happy by the birth of our only child. This hope deferred came after ten years of waiting. Whilst the child was still an infant I was compelled to be absent on professional business at Indianola in Warren county. I concluded my business as soon as possible and hurried home, feeling an unpleasant premonition that everything was not all right with the mother and the child. Heavy rains had swollen the streams between Indianola and Des Moines, and as I approached the small bridge crossing the creek about four miles south of Des Moines, I found the water running several feet deep over the floor of the bridge. I knew this made the pa.s.sage very dangerous because frequently such floods took away the flooring and made it probable that the horse and buggy in which I was riding might be cast into the flood of the stream. After some hesitation, however, I determined to take the risk and plunged into the stream accordingly. I got safely over and was much relieved when I found myself again on solid ground. I got home a little after dark and found an old lady who had been employed as nurse to the little one, who was squalling violently, engaged in trotting the infant upon her knee, as my wife lay on the bed on the very verge of hysterics. The next morning early I put out to find a nurse woman possessed of more flesh and patience, and the domestic trouble subsided. The first six months after the arrival of the little stranger my wife could scarcely obtain an hour's consecutive rest. The normal condition of the child appeared to be colicky. As I had to be engaged throughout the day in my business we finally established a second bedroom and I divided the time at night as well as I could with my wife, taking my turn at walking the floor at "half dress." The child, however, proved a great comfort to us and a pleasure, though for many months it was the pursuit of pleasure under difficulties.

At the approach of the following year we were surprised by a visit from the wife of Mr. Charles McMeekin, my wife's brother, who then resided at Cincinnati, Ohio. His wife brought with her two children, a boy and a girl, she herself being something of an invalid. It was very difficult at that time, as it has been ever since, to obtain competent domestic help, and after entertaining this lady and her two children for several months I found it necessary to notify my brother-in-law that situated as I was it was no longer convenient for me to entertain his family, and they accordingly left us and went to live at a boarding house kept by Mrs. Washburn on Fourth street. The next summer, at the request of my wife, I consented to take one of the sons of her sister Eliza, and I furnished the means for his transportation from Newport, Kentucky, to Des Moines. I tried to give this boy instructions in reading, writing, and arithmetic, but found him not inclined to study, and especially disinclined to afford any help or a.s.sistance about the house. He had been raised under the shadow of a peculiar inst.i.tution and had imbibed a strong prejudice against anything like work. After worrying with him for three or four months and being unable to make anything out of him, I sent him home to his mother.

In 1849 I purchased two lots on the northeast corner of Center and Fifth streets and removed my old buildings from my place on Fourth street to the lots so purchased, making some improvements on the buildings. These lots and buildings I afterwards sold and built a new house on the old place on Fourth street.

In the fall of 1877, whilst on a visit to Ohio, my half-brother, Charles R. Nourse, invited me to a private interview in which he disclosed the fact to me that he was engaged to be married and wanted me to do something to help him start in life in some kind of business.

The young man had not improved his opportunities for an education and had spent several winters doing farm work. Before I had left home on that occasion Sylva.n.u.s Edinburn had proposed to exchange a small farm that he had in the suburbs of the city, of eighty-eight acres, for some property I had acquired in town. It occurred to me that I might help the boy by making the trade for this farm, and I accordingly told him if he would have his mother send an invitation to his intended to come and take dinner with us, and I liked the looks of the proposed wife I would do something for him. He readily consented to this arrangement, as did also his intended, and as she appeared to be an industrious and bright young woman I came home and completed the purchase of the farm which I obtained a deed for in March, 1878. There was no building on the farm fit to live in. I had the old house moved onto the barn-lot and fixed up for a granary, and built a new house at the expense of about fifteen hundred dollars. In the following spring Charles R. with his bride put in an appearance and I settled them in their new home, where they lived happily for a number of years, but finally after about fifteen years that most fatal of all curses, strong drink, got possession of the young man and he went to the bad.

In the year of 1875 while visiting my sister at Tuscola, Illinois, I found her in possession of a very large and increasing family. I was especially pleased with her second daughter, Rose, then a young lady about twenty years of age, and suggested to my sister that if she would consent I would take Rose home with me and help her to an education.

Accordingly in 1876 Rose came to Des Moines and made her home with us.

My oldest brother, Joseph G. Nourse, had died at Cincinnati, Ohio, in March, 1863, and about the year of 1876 I had induced his widow with her three boys to remove to Des Moines, her oldest daughter Susan having previously married to Mr. J. A. Jackson. I had before that time induced Mr. Jackson and his wife also to remove to Des Moines and had given Mr. Jackson employment in my office as an a.s.sistant. I had also built on Fourth street a one story cottage of three rooms and a kitchen, which they occupied for a year or two.

After my niece, Rose Vimont, had been with us for probably a year I became satisfied that she had not succeeded in winning the affections of my wife. Dr. C. R. Pomeroy had been our pastor at the Centenary Methodist church for several years and had removed to Emporia, Kansas, and taken charge of the State Normal School at that place. As Rose desired to prepare herself for a teacher I went with her to Emporia in the spring of 1877 and placed her at the inst.i.tution under the care of Dr. Pomeroy and his wife, where she remained for twelve months, when school was suspended by reason of a fire which destroyed the buildings.

Rose returned to Des Moines and the following year, 1878, she taught a small school in the brick schoolhouse on the northwest corner of my farm, and had a room and boarded with my half brother, Charles R.

Afterwards she obtained a situation in the public schools of the city of Des Moines and became a very successful teacher, remaining in the city some fifteen years or more.

Soon after the purchase of my farm, in order further to promote the interests of my brother and give him employment, I became interested in the purchase and raising of pure bred short-horn cattle, committing to my brother the immediate supervision and care of them on the farm, and building some extensive barns and other out-buildings. I subsequently bought from George Sneer 126 acres of valuable land in section 20, towns.h.i.+p 79, range 24, and afterwards in July, 1879, bought thirty-seven acres adjoining the tract that I had purchased of Edinburn, making a part of the home farm. I also bought adjoining the same original tract eleven acres from a man by the name of Parks.

Subsequently I contracted with a man by the name of Miller to put down a bore hole on my land near the barns, with the hope of procuring artesian water for my cattle and a flowing well. In this I was disappointed, but I required the man to keep an accurate journal of the different strata through which he bored, and at the distance of about 140 feet below the surface he went through a valuable strata of coal averaging from four and one-half to six feet in thickness. I subsequently leased the right to take coal from these lands to the Keystone Coal Company, under which lease they sunk a shaft and operated a mine on the home place for about thirteen years. The royalty from the coal during these thirteen years more than paid the original purchase price of this land, which cost me originally only about fifty dollars per acre.

About the year 1878 I received a letter from my old friend, Amos Harris, formerly a resident of Centerville, Iowa, then living at Wichita, Kansas, informing me of the death of a man by the name of Loring, who had been a former client of mine, residing at Indianola, Iowa. He stated that Mr. Loring had left a widow and some five little children, all girls, the youngest an infant only a few months old, and that the family was left in a dest.i.tute condition; that upon questioning Mrs. Loring she had told him that I had transacted some business as attorney for herself and husband, and had sold a house and lot in Indianola that they had deeded to me, with a promise upon my part that after paying certain debts for the collection of which I was attorney, if there was anything left they should have it. I had realized about one hundred dollars over and above the amount paid out and I immediately sent Mrs. Loring fifty dollars for the relief of her immediate necessities, and afterwards paid her the balance. Some four or five years after this Mrs. Loring came to Des Moines, bringing with her this young child then about four or five years of age, stating that she had a short time before that married a man by the name of Gregory, that he was a man of considerable means but refused to support her first husband's children, that she wished to make some arrangement to have this young child cared for, that she had already disposed of her older girls among her relatives. I introduced her to Mrs. Winkley, then a resident of Des Moines, who kept a school for small children and boarded and cared for them, a lady to whom my son had been going to school and who was held in high estimation by her many friends. Mrs.

Gregory, as she then was, arranged with Mrs. Winkley to leave her youngest child with her to be cared for, and left with me some money to pay Mrs. Winkley from time to time, and also any other expenses that might be incurred in the care of the child. Mrs. Winkley lived on Third street within a block or two of our residence, and I frequently had this child visit our home. My wife seemed to be interested in the child and became attached to her, as I did also myself. Along about the first of February, 1882, Mrs. Gregory came into my office in Des Moines, stating that she had come to take her child Susie, as she could no longer afford to bear the expense of her keeping with Mrs. Winkley. I asked her if that was the only objection to the child remaining where it was, and she said yes, she was very well satisfied but she was then separated from her husband and was not able to pay the expense incident to the child's keeping in her present situation. I asked her if she had any home to which she could take the child, and she said no, that she had employment at some sanitary inst.i.tution but it really was not a home for the little one. Upon the impulse of the moment and without any very considerable thought upon the subject and having no consultation with my wife, I told Mrs. Gregory to leave the child where it was and I would bear the expense of caring for her. My income from my practice at that time was averaging about $10,000 a year and I saw nothing very serious about this undertaking, but upon reporting it to my wife she expressed herself very much dissatisfied. Upon further reflection I feared that after the child became older the mother might claim its custody, and for my own protection I wrote out articles of adoption and sent it to the mother, which she duly executed and returned it to me, surrendering to me the full care, custody and control of the child, which articles were duly recorded in Polk county, Iowa, on the 8th of February, 1882. After remaining for several years with Mrs. Winkley I sent this child to Chicago to the school of Miss Rebecca Rice, where she remained for a number of years and received a very satisfactory education. The enterprise, however, of caring for and educating this child was not a success. My wife imbibed a strong prejudice against her and never received her as a member of the family. When she was about seventeen years of age she became dissatisfied and I sent her to her mother, who was then living in California. She did not remain with her mother, but afterwards came back to me and by her own wish and desire I arranged to have her taught telegraphy by the superintendent of city telegraphs at Chicago. In the meantime I ascertained that while she was in California she had engaged herself to be married to a man by the name of Guldager. I tried to dissuade her from this early and inconsiderate engagement but she had not learned the lesson of obedience and was not easily controlled by good advice or counsel. Her California lover furnished her the means and she left without my knowledge or consent and went to California to him when she was about eighteen years of age, and was married.

After the dissolution of my partners.h.i.+p with Williamson & St. John in 1865, I continued the practice of law without any partner in business, receiving a.s.sistance from time to time from young men who were studying law in the office or who were beginners in the profession. None of these, however, proved entirely satisfactory.

About the year 1870 Benjamin F. Kauffman, then a young man recently graduated in the law department of the State University, came to me desiring a situation in my office. I had been so disappointed in the young men who had preceded him that I hesitated about making any further engagement in that direction. Judge George G. Wright, however, who had been one of Mr. Kauffman's preceptors at the law school, warmly recommended him and urged me to give him a position in the office. He was entirely without means and I offered finally to pay his board for six months and take him upon trial. He asked me what he could expect after the expiration of the six months. I told him that after six months if I found that I could get along without him I should discontinue the arrangement. He replied that that was a very hard proposition. I told him no, that he was a young man in good health, full of energy, and if he could not make himself a necessity to my business in six months there was no reason why I should continue even to pay his board. He said if he accepted my proposition, what would I do for him at the end of the six months. I told him that if he made himself a necessity to my business so that I could not get along without him, he would then be master of the situation and I thought there would be no trouble about arranging terms that would be entirely satisfactory to him. He came into the office accordingly and applied himself diligently to business. I occasionally stated to him some question involved in cases I had pending and desired him to examine the authorities and make a brief upon the question involved. He proved to be of very material a.s.sistance, very industrious, with a clear mind capable of understanding and a.n.a.lyzing and applying the cases he found in the books bearing upon the question under investigation. At the end of six months I arranged a partners.h.i.+p with him and he continued in that relation for seventeen years, with much profit pecuniarily both to himself and myself.

In the year of 1874 I exchanged a lot that I owned on Center street with Mrs. McCauley for property on Fifth street, taking the deed in the name of the firm of Nourse & Kauffman, upon which we built the subsequent year a two story brick building, occupying the south half of the first story for our law offices. We subsequently bought from Thomas Boyd the forty-four feet on the east end of this purchase, giving us the entire forty-four south feet of lot 2, block 22, of the original town, and in the year 1886 we built a four story brick building covering the entire surface of the lot.

On the dissolution of my partners.h.i.+p with Mr. Kauffman I formed a partners.h.i.+p with my nephew, Clinton L. Nourse, and we removed into the new building and occupied the front rooms of the second story. Mr.

Kauffman in the meantime entered into partners.h.i.+p with one N. T.

Guernsey and occupied rooms on the fourth floor of the building.

About the first of January, 1880, I received information that my father, who had removed to and was then residing at Reynoldsburg, Ohio, was very ill and not expected to live. I immediately went to Reynoldsburg. My father was still conscious and able to recognize me, but was very nearly approaching the end. My brother, John D., who resided then at Lancaster, Ohio, was in attendance upon my father but unable to arrest the disease. On the 3rd of January my father pa.s.sed away. After his death in conference with my step-mother in regard to her future, I found she was disposed to join her sister, Mary Herron, in building a small house in West Rushville and making her home there.

I was satisfied that this arrangement would not last. My step-mother was a self-sacrificing woman and I knew her sister's disposition was very exacting. It was also arranged that my half-sister Mary should live with them. When I bid my step-mother good-bye I told her that I had no confidence in the permanency of the arrangement she had made with her sister, but in view of her faithfulness to my father during his old age I wanted her to feel that she should have a home, and if the arrangement she had made to live with her sister did not prove satisfactory, not to hesitate about advising me of the fact, and I would provide her a home on the farm where her youngest boy Charles R., was then living. As I antic.i.p.ated, after a few years I received information that mother and sister Mary both desired to come to Iowa and avail themselves of my proffered help. They came accordingly and the first year resided with my half-brother Charles. Mother then had about twelve-hundred dollars of the small means left, and I proposed to borrow this money and build her a house which she should have rent free, and I would pay her interest on the twelve-hundred dollars which would enable her to live comfortably on the farm. I accordingly built the cottage for herself and her daughter Mary, which they continued to occupy for several years. In the meantime sister Mary taught a Sunday School cla.s.s in the neighborhood, and among her scholars was one Chris Mathes. This rude uneducated boy, seventeen years younger than herself, pretended to fall in love with her and on the first of January, 1889, she became his wife. In March, 1896, my step-mother died, leaving what little means she had to her daughter Mary, and what was left of the money she had advanced to me for building the house she had occupied on the farm, which I afterwards paid over to Mary in full.

CHAPTER XVII

BREEDER OF SHORT HORN CATTLE

My half-brother, Charles R., continued on the farm in my employment and in the care of my short-horn cattle business until the year 1889, when I sold out my entire herd. During the ten years I was in the business I enjoyed the recreation and attention to my stock, finding it a great relief from my nervous tension and anxiety incident to an extensive practice of the law. Soon after I commenced the business I attended a meeting of the short-horn breeders of the state at West Liberty, Iowa, at which time there was organized a Short-Horn Breeders' a.s.sociation of the state of Iowa, and I was elected president of the a.s.sociation and continued in that office for seven years and until I retired from the business. In the meantime we had also organized a national a.s.sociation at Chicago for the purpose of purchasing the short-horn herd books published in New York, Ohio, and Kentucky, and establis.h.i.+ng the _American Short-Horn Herd Book_, which became the only authentic publication of pedigrees of short-horn cattle in the United States. I was made a member of this board of control and continued in that relation for a number of years, until I declined a further election because of my retirement from the business. Our board of directors represented some eleven different states of the Union with one director from Canada. Our annual meetings were held at the time of the annual Fat Stock Show in Chicago, and the gentlemen with whom I was a.s.sociated in that capacity were among the most pleasant acquaintances I ever made during my lifetime. I found them intelligent, broad-minded men, entirely unselfish and devoted to the interests of the a.s.sociation.

During my connection with the board we paid off the entire indebtedness incurred in the purchase of the _Short-Horn Herd Book_ as theretofore published by Mr. Allen of New York, and also the indebtedness incurred in the purchase of the _Kentucky Herd Book_ and the _Ohio Herd Book_.

Our state a.s.sociation also met once a year in connection with the Improved Stock Breeders' a.s.sociation of the state. We generally wound up these sessions of our meetings with a banquet given us by the citizens of the place where we held our meetings. At these banquets we had a number of toasts and speeches, rather of the humorous than of the instructive kind. I give herewith a specimen that I find printed with the proceedings of the a.s.sociation held at Ottumwa on the 4th day of December, 1885.

The Short-horn and Improved Stock Breeders' a.s.sociations of Iowa were intended in a great measure by their founders as missionary societies. It was contemplated that they would hold their conventions in the smaller towns and more spa.r.s.ely settled portions of the state, where their discussions upon breeds and breeding would educate the farmers around in these great and important industries.

A feast like this in one of the thriving and finest cities of the state is hardly consistent with this benevolent and self-sacrificing purpose, and I have reason to fear for the consequences; we may fall from grace. At a recent session of the New York Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal church, it is said that the bishop had great difficulty in satisfying the preachers about their appointments. One of the elders gravely informed the bishop, that the preachers in his district had two ambitions; one was to get to heaven, and the other was to be stationed in the city of New York, and if they were to miss either, he thought they would prefer to go to New York!

Now I know many of these self-sacrificing gentlemen I see around me have in the past of their lives been trying to do good, looking for their reward largely in the next world; but I fear in the future, when we come to fix the place of our next annual meeting, they will forget the spirit of self-sacrifice and the world to come, and say, "Let us go to Ottumwa!" [Great laughter.]

I wish I could express to the citizens of Ottumwa the genuine appreciation that I know these my brethren feel for them. It could not be otherwise than that they should love you. You have appreciated us and we must ever appreciate you. Your example also may be valuable to us; others may hear of your good works and may be thereby moved to be equally mindful of our necessities.

[Applause.]

My first knowledge of Ottumwa was in the year 1851. It was then a straggling village of one street lined on either side with wooden shanties. It would have been impossible for me to have imagined then that in a few short years, whilst I am yet a young man [laughter], there should be built here a substantial city of fifteen thousand inhabitants. This goodly town is indeed a proud monument to the thrift, enterprise, intelligence, and taste of its inhabitants. Its commercial and manufacturing interests, and its tasteful architecture you may justly be proud of.

Iowa is indeed a remarkable state and her people a peculiar people.

We have but few drones in the hive. Our population is made up of simply the young and the strong and the enterprising of the other states that have come hither to build up their personal fortunes, and who have at the same time laid well and strong the foundations of a great state. There is scarcely a college or university of any of the older states that is not well represented in our men and women. We have come together here and what one did not know he has learned from his next door neighbor. All have contributed something to the common fund of knowledge and enterprise. We have now built our own schoolhouses and colleges, and today we have a less per cent of illiteracy than any other state in the Union. But there is one burden on my heart and one thought I desire to express: What is the future to be? Are we giving to the state the children that may worthily fill our places and take up and carry forward the work that we have begun? The highest duty that we owe to the state is to furnish to it in our children that perfect type of manhood that will const.i.tute its true glory. What signifies this acc.u.mulation of wealth, these fine buildings, this beautiful architecture, if our sons are to be profligates and the accursed saloon is to destroy all the fruit of our toil. The time has come when as citizens and as fathers we must seriously address ourselves to this problem of our civilization.

I came to Iowa more than thirty years ago. I formed many warm attachments among the young men, then just beginning life. I remember the pride and hope that these young men and their then young wives had in their children. As I visit the older towns where these men have lived and won honorable distinction I have inquired for their children. Alas! Too often it is a sad story and a painful remembrance, and I have asked myself the question, is this always to be so? And is there no help?

But enough of this; I forget I was not appointed to preach a sermon, but to respond to a toast, and to express the appreciation of these stockbreeders for your kindness. You have done well. The scriptures exhort "that we should not be forgetful to entertain strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." Now I am willing to admit that it would be a violent imagination that would mistake one of these l.u.s.ty stockbreeders for an angel. It will probably be some time before even the pin-feathers will sprout from their shoulder blades. But they are susceptible and under proper influences and conditions I don't know what may happen. I remember in the early days of Des Moines, when we were dependent upon ourselves entirely for amus.e.m.e.nts, the ladies got up a public entertainment consisting chiefly of tableaux. I had the honor of officiating as stage manager. One representation was of a good and an evil spirit, representing an angel and a devil. The ladies were quite tardy in getting ready. I went into the green room to hurry matters and found the ladies dressing [great applause and continued interruption]. Do not interrupt in the middle of a sentence. I was saying I found the ladies dressing the angel--a young lady to whom they were attaching a pair of wings. I chided their delay and unfortunately remarked, "that it took a long time to make an angel out of a woman." The man who was to represent the evil spirit was sitting by, all ready, with blackened face and horns, and one of the ladies, pointing to him instantly remarked, "that it took but little time to make a devil out of a man." Of course it is only a question of time with all of this crowd. We all expect to be angels but it will take time and good feeding.

I believe I have fully exhausted the subject a.s.signed to me, to say nothing of the audience. It is sad to have to make a speech when you don't know beforehand what you are going to say and n.o.body knows after you are done what you have said. Brethren we have cast our bread upon the waters--and it has returned to us after many days, literally and substantially.

I cannot conclude without thanking you for your quiet and uninterrupted attention.

During my visit to Emporia, Kansas, with my niece, Rose Vimont, I found a volume written by Alexander H. Stephens, evidently for the purpose of justifying the attempt that had been made to destroy the government of the United States by the disintegration of the government and the establishment of the doctrine of the right of secession. That fall I was invited by the president of the faculty of Simpson Centenary College at Indianola, Iowa, to deliver an address at the college commencement. I accordingly prepared with considerable care a lecture upon the const.i.tutional relations of the national and state governments, in which I endeavored to combat the heresies contained in Stephens's book, and the great truth that the national government was not a compact between sovereign states, but was what it purported to be--a government emanating from the source of all power: to-wit, the people. The trustees and faculty of the college, after this lecture, honored me by conferring upon me the degree of Doctor of Laws. This lecture I afterwards delivered, upon the invitation of the president and faculty of Drake University, before the students of that inst.i.tution, and also before the law cla.s.s of the State University at Iowa City.